[ thursday, december 27 ]

the boy sitting across from me on the t tonight had red eyes. I don't mean that his eyes were red; I mean he had red eyes the same way I have blue-grey eyes and the girl in the grass behind the stadium had brown eyes. he was clearly only a few years inside adolescence, still baby-faced with round, cherubic cheeks and a pale, hairless upper lip. the hair on his head was long, sticking up in a cluster of six curving, gel-coated spikes, dyed the color of maraschino cherries at the ends. he was wearing a spiked dog collar and jeans with such wide legs that they hid his feet completely, and he had his arm around a girl who looked even younger and had her cotton-candy-pink hair parted unevenly, held up in ponytails. they sat there together as we crossed the bridge, looking backwards out the train window at the nighttime lights of boston reflecting off the charles; in parallel profile so that I could see the line of silver studs arcing up the girl's ear and the single chain dangling from underneath her boy's hair, bumping noiselessly against his earlobe while the wheels shuddered across the tracks.

all three of us stood up as the train screeched on the curve coming into harvard, and the boy never got as far as finding his balance so he stumbled sideways into me. to my surprise, he started blushing and stammering, tripping over his own tongue because he couldn't apologize fast enough. it's okay, I said, please don't worry about it. and he looked down from four inches above me, bit his lip, and nodded. he was covered in leather and metal and he had blood-red eyes and he smiled at me, shyly and sweetly. I smiled back. I love it when people surprise me.
[  22:28  •  +  ]

[ tuesday, december 25 ]

my next door neighbor is a cameroonian prince, who has so many younger brothers and sisters that he can't count them anymore. he came to have christmas dinner with us, and brought spicy stew with baby eggplants and soft chunks of tofu, because in his village in cameroon, christmas is a big potluck. everyone cooks something different and they bring all the food out and set it in front of their houses, and then they take their plates and walk all around serving themselves something from every dish until all the food is shared.

so I was thinking about christmas rituals and what makes a holiday; it's funny to imagine people walking around outside gathering up their christmas dinners, but there are things that used to be a part of my holiday that have completely disappeared and seem almost quaintly alien now. on the way home from church last night we drove past a station wagon exiting the garden shop parking lot with a fat long-needled tree lashed to its roof, and we started talking about how we used to get our trees. for three years we lived on five acres of farm and swampland, and every december my father would take us and his flimsy-looking rusty little handsaw tromping out into the forest to look for our christmas tree. the ground was always snow-covered and had been for weeks, but somehow it was still soft and littered with a cris-crossed maze of fallen logs and matted weeds; often I would spend five or ten solid minutes looking intently at my feet and the terrain underneath, following my father by the sound of his crashing footsteps, and I would look up and blink at the unfamilar sight of dark tree trunks and forest-filtered sunlight. the trees that were small enough for carrying were all skinny, half-naked things with branches that drooped and veered off at startling angles, lichen growing up the sides, and spiny, spindle-thin tops that were barely strong enough to hold up normal stars, let alone the construction paper angel I had made, which was nearly a foot tall and soaked in elmer's glue and weighted down with at least four ounces of green and gold and red glitter.

they were so ugly and pathetic but we loved those trees. now we have lot-bought trees that are full and thick and beautiful and smell like nothing else, and we love them too. but it is different, less personal. cultures change; traditions change; soon we will seem as unfamiliar to our former selves as storytold cameroonians do to us. but the ornaments, at least, are the same, with all my uneven paintbrush strokes in the right places under the yellowing polyurethane.

you know what? it's funny, but I really love christmas.
[  19:58  •  +  ]

[ monday, december 24 ]

last night at the nutcracker, we sat in front of two little children who couldn't figure out why there was no talking and took it upon themselves to provide the audio track. when the party boys and girls were dancing around with their new toys at the christmas eve party, the little girl announced that there were "too much children." when the mice appeared to battle the toy soldiers, they were met with a series of sqeaks and little-boy acapella battle noises. during the chinese tea dance, they whistled along with the piccolo. and when the sugar plum fairy appeared, resplendent in sequined pink satin and stiff tulle, they leaned together and whispered excitedly to one another: "barbie! it's barbie!"

I thought it was great, but I've seen the nutcracker before, so I wasn't worried about missing anything. my first nutcracker was at lincoln center in 1983, and while I know I had read the story and listened to the music over and over beforehand, I don't remember much of what happened on stage. what I do remember is the lobby afterwards, regal with its plush carpet and sparkling chandeliers and black-suited ushers, full of people wearing brown furs and red velvet dresses and fancy earrings and crisply creased trousers. I was two and I had my best party shoes on, and outside the fountain was tall and shining white, brighter than the moon.
[  11:18  •  +  ]

[ sunday, december 23 ]

I spent a long time on the train today. and I watched

so many airplanes, most of them stuck to the sky and glinting like pins in a half-finished dress, made all the sharper by their impermanence, and the occasional horizon-skimming planes flying parallel to the tracks, still dancing with the air for a few final moments before falling into gravity's waiting arms. airplanes and trains and all of us aging gracefully under the perfect curve of the half-faced afternoon moon

the corners of factories and tips of chimneys poking through a froth of smoke, symptoms of rabid capitalism, self-consuming

that still-empty lower manhattan skyline, barely taller than the golden-wet rolls of marshland beside the rails; the empire state building suddenly huge and fierce, standing guard; a brilliant streak of reflected orange sunlight in the pluming jetstream that stretched up from behind the solid-block sillhouettes of battery park city

plastic bags clinging to rusted chain-link fences and scrappy bare-branched bushes, flattened by the wind so that their dimensions are determined entirely by their surroundings, littering the entire east coast like pigeons

graffiti hugging the walls of buildings that would otherwise be so nondescriptly grey that you might have to look twice to find the border between dully painted brick and cloudy winter sky

people like caricatures: the woman with painted-on eyebrows under her floppy purple hat, who sat with a lapful of lace and stitched at it with a slender golden needle held carefully between pudgy fingers and shiny black-polished nails; the main with grease-slicked hair and jowly folds of skin and flesh brushing at the edge of his faded white shirt collar; the girl next to me with impeccably curly hair, who held her pen like a cigarette in one hand and rubbed the fingers of her other hand alternately across the contoured silver buttons on her cellphone and the stickysoft seam between her upper and lower lips while she read the wine for dummies, starting with chapter two, these taste buds are for you; the swattie who sat a few rows in front of me and sptent the entire trip with his glasses half-cocked on his forehead and the left side of his face hidden in the dark of his palm, jostling back and forth in his seat as the train shifts its balance on the tracks, asleep; me

too many things to see, let alone record, but enough to remind me that I love this world almost as much as I love travelling with my head finally full of accidental similes instead of unfulfilled obligations...

and
now I am going to bed.
[  01:03  •  +  ]